[http://www.amyguerra.com] "A solid body of social science and criminological research dating back to the eighteenth century tells us that behavior can be changed by punishment that is certain and swift even if it is not severe. Conversely, if punishments for wrongdoing are sporadic and delayed, increasing severity has only modest impact. That’s why quintupling the prison and jail population has failed to get us back to the crime rates of the early 1960s. (Averaged across major crime categories, current rates are about 250 percent of 1962 rates.) The importance of swift and predictable consequences is plain common sense, understood by every parent. But that lesson has not been incorporated into our corrections system."

The above quote, an excerpt from UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman's Washington Monthly article titled "Jail Break: How smarter parole and probation can cut the nation's incarceration rate," raises interesting criminal justice issues. While just as much criticism exists of sentencing guidelines and the dissolution of judicial discretion, (see http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa458.pdf) Kleiman's analysis, particularly of Hawaii's HOPE program for probationers, appears exceedingly more timely and valuable given the state of corrections in California.

[www.amyguerra.com] On May 17th of this year, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 in Graham v. Florida that sentencing a juvenile who hasn't committed murder to "life without parole" is cruel and unusual punishment.

Touting Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child [an international treaty that was signed by the United States in 1995, but never ratified], some activists propose that Graham doesn't go far enough and that juveniles shouldn't be sentenced to life without parole under any circumstances.

This article, written before the Graham decision, notes that while there are 2,388 juveniles still serving LWOP sentences worldwide, the United States became the last country currently sentencing youth to life without parole in 2008:

According to a report at the University of San Francisco School of Law website, when Israel began granting parole review in 2008 to juveniles sentenced to life imprisonment, it left the United States as the last country sentencing youth to life without parole for crimes committed under the age of 18. According to a November 2007 report by The Center for Law and Global Justice and the Frank Newman International Human Rights Law Clinic, at that point 2388 individuals around the world were serving LWOP sentences for crimes committed as juveniles. Seven were serving in Israel and 2381 in the United States.

Three days ago, this interesting opinion piece (written by a retired police officer, a Department of Justice attorney who prosecuted youth and a a former warden of San Quentin State Prison and director of the California Department of Corrections) argues for support of SB 399, a legislative bill that that would allow youth a chance at parole after serving a 25 year sentence:

Collectively, we have put or kept a lot of people in prison. Prison is where some people justly belong, many for long periods of time. But it is exactly our experience in law enforcement that causes us to agree with the Supreme Court's recent decision to abolish the sentence of life without parole for teens in nonhomicide cases.

That decision, however, did not finish the reforms needed in juvenile sentencing. There are thousands of lifers in the nation's prisons — about 250 in California alone — who as teenagers participated in crimes involving homicides. They all deserve a second chance, and at least some of them may deserve to be released.For more information on SB 399: http://www.fairsentencingforyouth.org/legislation/sb399-text/

About the Author

Amy K. Guerra is a criminal defense attorney in Fresno, CA. In addition to her career in criminal defense, she's worked as a freelance writer and within the non-profit sector. She continues to be active in the community and enjoys writing about issues in criminal law relative to their community impact.